Will the Real Alfred Hitchcock Please Stand Up?

It's Alfred Hitchcock's birthday today—he would have been 125. And there was a day last year, when I suddenly became besieged with a lot of Hitchcock documentaries, all purporting to use his words to get at the mystery behind the director of so many mysteries and thrillers. Even the names of the documentaries were creepily similar, confusingly so, which would have made the old guy sniff at the lack of originality, rather than chuckle.

But, the name is the thing. The name "Alfred Hitchcock" was a brand and more people knew his name and the type of entertainment he made than any other director. Like an irony in one of his movies, it was both a blessing...and a curse.

I Am Alfred Hitchcock (John Ashton McCarthy, 2021) A career overview, the type you're likely to see if someone has no real access to the subject and merely a large collection of clips to cull from. Think of it as an "Entertainment Tonight" career overview...with a little bit of speculation about what made Hitch "tick." But, not much.

 

And it's extensive: from home movies to his interviews—both filmed and merely audio as well as with some confederates, old and new—starting from Hitchcock's childhood, including (invaluably) his time in early British silents and German studios. And a lot of unseen talking heads. A couple of snatches of past Spielberg interviews are included, but most of the comments are from Eli Roth (for some reason), William Friedkin, Edgar Wright, and John Landis. Ben Mankiewicz weighs in. Much mention is made of Joan Harrison (as it probably should be, given the work she did for him in his American transition and on his television shows) and there is a lot of nice footage from the AFI salute to the man, including his extensive tribute to his secret weapon, wife Alma Reville. There are nice touches throughout, and it's quite entertainingly put together. But, as an exploration of the man, his movies, and how they all relate, it's pretty basic stuff.

 

 

My Name is Alfred Hitchcock (Mark Cousins, 2023) The iconoclastic Irish documentarian (he made The Story of Film: An Odyssey and The Eyes of Orson Welles) makes his look at Hitchcock (for his first film's 100th anniversary) with a conceit that he's used in some of his lesser-known films, as a conversation between the filmmaker and the director-subject (voiced by Alistair McGowan and quite convincingly). Oh, some of the things that McGowan-Hitchcock says in the film are a matter of record, but Cousins uses this conversational version of "Alfred Hitchcock Explains It All To You" to build on themes that might have gotten lost in the chases and cameos, the Blondes and the wrong men and the usual accoutrements of a Hitchcock film—"the core of things" (as the faux-Hitchcock states). These are Cousins' personal thoughts and observances being seduced and manipulated by Hitchcock, who used the mechanics of cinema, the psychology of photography, and his own neuroses to dredge up our fears, raise our blood-pressures, and ponder our natures (while pandering to them, as well).

And so, though they're Cousins' observations through the voice of Hitchcock, one could hardly help thinking that Hitchcock is being misinterpreted ("You do know that movies are lies, don't you?" says the faux-Hitchcock at one point) as he was one of the most obvious of directors—what he intended he put on the screen. It's just that nobody had done things quite like that before, made movies like that before, thought thoughts like that and confessed them so nakedly like that before.

Cousins is generous with clips as he focuses on six themes that thematically run through the director's films: Escape, Desire, Loneliness, Time, Fulfillment, and Height. Just reading that list, one can tick off random instances from Hitchcock films that will prove the point, but that they run consistently through his work, even fleetingly more than proves Cousins' point.

 

At the same time, Cousins' Hitchcock has a marketer's point of view on making films. This version emphasizes "stars and glamour" as the motivator for attracting audiences, as they already have a sympathetic, empathetic view of the actors, doing a lot of the leg-work to get them on "their side." To the point where Cousins' Hitchcock avatar never mentions character's names in his movies, only the thespians. "When Cary Grant" does this or "when Grace Kelly does that."

 

Double Take (Johan Grimonprez, 2009) 

"You think all the way through that cinema is going to be killed by television or television is going to kill cinema or America is going to kill Russia or Russia is going to kill America. But at the end, it’s the third one, the new one, the younger one, the YouTube version, that comes along and kills them all."

Jose Luis Borges' initial short story August 25, 1983 

 

"They say that if you meet your double, you should kill him. Or, that he will kill you. I can't remember which, but...the gist of it is...that two of you is one too many. By the end of the script, one of you must die."

 

The wildest of the Hitchcock documentaries, Double Take is a "found-footage" documentary using even the very grain of the image to tell the story. Based on a Jose Luis Borges short story, "August 25, 1983" and expanded from Grimonperez's* earlier short Looking for Alfred, it is a long story, narrated by another Hitchcock sound-alike, Mark Perry, of an encounter a fictitious Hitchcock has in 1963 with himself from 1980. It's a shaggy-dog story, recreated with a Hitchcock lookalike, and a lot of editing between Hitchcock footage...from "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and other sources, interspersed with news coverage of geo-political events and Instant Folgers commercials (which turn bad coffee into domestic drama). It's a bit of a satire about the new replacing the old, but not changing much for the transition. It doesn't precisely nail its thesis, events being difficult to bend to one's advantage. But, there are moments of wit and some lost opportunities.

 

Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail (Laurent Bouzereau, 2024) Writer-director Bouzereau has made a career out of directing films in support of other films; watch any DVD of any "important" film of the last 30 years and Bouzereau has directed or produced it, even producing anniversary-soundtrack expansions of some film scores. His work has given him a rolodex of contacts and access to some of the great directors and the archives of many a film. His style is breezy, entertaining and imaginative—when he wants to get to the bottom of a story, he'll get there and make it as memorable as its subject. And when doing a documentary of, say, Mark Harris' Five Came Back, he'll shed the customary upbeat promotional stance required to gloss up the subject to a glittering press-release, and risk being too revelatory, even to the subject's disadvantage, in order to drive home his point and make it the definitive word on the subject. He's good. Very good. It's no wonder so many high-profile directors and producers trust him telling the story of their work.

And in his film for StudioCanal and TCM, Becoming Hitchcock, he also tries to get to the depths of what made Hitchcock not only unique but "a brand."  His thesis being that Hitchcock's 1929 film Blackmail was the first of what one could call "a Hitchcock film" with the tropes of wronged people, distinctive weapons, arresting blondes, landmark chases, eroticism, food fetishes and such being firmly in place as they would be for the rest of Hitchcock's career (what, no mothers or enclosed places?)

It's true to a certain extent, even considering there is some cherry-picking going on. But, if one is looking for "the" first "Hitchcock" film, Blackmail is the most likely suspect (the only reason it doesn't loom larger in peoples' memories is it was in his British period, on the cusp of the sound era, and—being in the public domain—it seems less valued as a marketable property than his other films (which is a bit ironic).

 

But, some elements that are discussed—the tropes—are in his earlier films, because what made Hitchcock Hitchcock were his obsessions and his neuroses, which were there in little sparks at the beginning with even his first film, his vulnerabilities only growing full-flower when he had more confidence in the control of his films (how's that for irony?).

But, sure, say it was Blackmail because of the chase through the British Museum (all done in studio, by the way). But, the film is also notable for being the director's first sound film—he did another version for silent cinemas that were not speaker-wired-up while making this one, sometimes shooting alternate footage for scenes where title cards needed to do the talking. There are, frankly, radical transitions using only sound, showing how freakishly ingenious Hitchcock could be playing with new toys. 

 

And how's this for radical? Hitchcock's "blonde" for this one was a Czech actress named Anny Ondra whose English was so heavily-accented that she was directed to just mouth the words while actress Joan Barry performed the vocal part out of sight of the camera. The illusion is almost flawless, noticeable only if you're looking (and listening for it). You come away from Bouzereau's film maybe not so assured that Blackmail set the template for what was "Hitchcockian" in the future, but certainly convinces that the man was a genius for figuring out ways for telling stories pictorially, psychologically...but also sonically.

But, then...we already knew that.

* Grimonperez was nominated for the "Best Documentary Feature" Oscar last year for his documentary Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

 

Dave Stevens: Drawn to Perfection

Dave Stevens: Drawn to Perfection (Kelvin Mao, 2022) I knew this movie was around, but I'd never gotten to see it until recently. Comic artist Dave Stevens was a favorite of mine, first becoming aware of his work writing and drawing with his own self-owned project "The Rocketeer". Even if you didn't know Stevens' comic, you might have heard of or even seen the movie based on it. As this documentary of his life-story mostly concerns his graphics output, it's going to be a bit "in the weeds." Cinematically, the doc is a labor of love, so it's not that impressive, other than the detail of the conversation of the talking heads (who are artists and thus regularly holed up in their studios) and models and of Stevens' family and friends. It's all laid out chronologically from his boyhood to his too-early death at 53, due to leukemia.

 

There were a lot of things about Stevens' work that spoke for itself. Number one, it was beautiful—the draftsmanship was nonpareil, with a detail that was rarely seen in comics, but then (2) it looked like the old Hal Foster strips combined with Will Eisner's sensibilities, with a pulpy, cartoon-y edge and an obvious love for 30's-40's design and architecture. It was nostalgic, but for a past that never existed but you kind of wish had. There was an odd comfort to it, like a nice, greasy lunch at an ancient deco-diner (where the milkshakes are served in the mixer).

Stevens' company logo

But, Stevens could be frustrating. He was a perfectionist with his art—and it showed!—which would mean he would blow past deadlines to finish it and cause delays in publishing. You anticipated a new "Rocketeer" chapter...and it wouldn't show up—like, for a year. But, when it DID show up, you devoured it, studied it, and carefully put it in a mylar sleeve for preservation. They were special enough to take care of. Once the series became popular, Stevens became more diligent and more demanding of himself.

He'd been working for Jack Kirby ("The King"), did some work on the "Star Wars" newspaper strip, as well as commercial art, before being offered the chance to do a back-up series for the "Starslayer" comic being done by Mike Grell for the newly started Pacific Comics. Grell's first story was originally to appear as a DC comic, got dropped, and with the page-count being a little low, Stevens was offered to do a fill-in series. With a wide-range of interests and reference material, Stevens created a Commando Cody-like character, "The Rocketeer". With its Gee Bee Racer, landmarks like the Chaplin Aerodrome and the Bulldog Cafe, winkingly-anonymous references to pulp-heroes like Doc Savage and The Shadow and characters based on the images of pin-up girl Bettie Page (as the hero's girlfriend) and "Jonny Quest" co-creator Doug Wildey (as a mechanic pal) and with Rocketeer Cliff Secord based on himself, Stevens had his down-on-his luck pilot discover a mysterious advanced jet-pack that would allow him to fly solo through the skies, and getting himself into all sorts of troublesome adventures.

 

"The Rocketeer" feature became quite popular—probably to the detriment of Stevens' career—and the series, when it appeared, was always a best-seller, outlasting two of the comics companies that distributed it (probably a case of putting all your eggs in one basket, as companies would see the money roll in, but in a limited capacity as Stevens' perfectionism wreaked havoc on publishing schedules and those companies expanded their out-put with properties that didn't sell well, and eventually finances collapsed). Hollywood grabbed at the character—specifically Disney—as an "Indiana Jones"-style knock-off, and, for a time, Stevens was heavily involved with that. Plus, there were lawsuits because the property generated cash and the other way for comics companies to make money was gambling on litigation. "The Rocketeer" was Stevens' baby, and any parent will tell you how that complicates your life, overtakes your life, and becomes an obsession.

And Stevens' work became something of its own brand; he'd make art-prints (usually of the character based on Bettie Page) and "good-girl art" (as it's called) was one of his obsessions, plus he was in high demand for doing covers for other projects...because good covers sold comic books. And Stevens always drew good, striking covers...the kind fan-boys like. "Hmph".

 

One of the interesting things after his success was the re-emergence of Bettie Page, who had fallen on hard times and had no idea that Stevens had almost single-handedly revised interest in her and made her something of an icon. Once Page's whereabouts were discovered, Stevens immediately began arrangements to compensate her for the use of her past image (she refused to be photographed in her later years thinking she'd gained too much weight) and became something of an unofficial caretaker for her. I found that part of the story quite uncharacteristic of the industry and rather touching. Then, Stevens was diagnosed with leukemia and decided after a couple of decades of pencil and ink drawing that he would try and perfect his brush-work painting, something that he never felt he mastered to his exacting standards.

He finally succumbed to his leukemia March 11, 2008. In December of the same year, Page died. No coincidence to that. Stevens just died young.

But, he never lost his fans. Tribute issues of "The Rocketeer" and his other works have been going at a continuous rate by those in the comics industry who were friends or, at least, were influenced by his work and keep the flame alive.

The documentary is full of those friends like Jim Silke, Bruce Timm (who created the Batman: The Animated Series), William Stout, Mark Evanier, and scores of others he crossed paths with, be they comics professionals, models...even Rocketeer star Billy Campbell and director Joe Johnston weigh in. Their stories are varied, funny, ribald, exasperated (but in a good, laughing way) and always fond. Very fond, in point of fact.

I "met" him once and I may have mentioned this story before. He had family in Portland and he'd occasionally show up at the Rose City Comics Convention to do panels, run a table, sign things for fans and, one year, I was one those. I brought a promotional poster he'd done for The Rocketeer and I waited, a surprisingly short time, for him to sign it for me. And yes, he was even meticulous about that, taking minutes to sign his name "just so" and telling me (in deadly earnest) "Now...make sure you wait a little bit because the paper has a high gloss finish and you should allow the ink to dry before it touches anything because it's kind of nappy right now and it'll smudge..." I assured him I would and immediately took it to my car to lay it out flat so it would dry the way he wanted it to. That poster hung in the studio I worked in for many years, and one day I did a voice-over session with John Corbett, who was quite the "break-out star" on the TV series Northern Exposure. He was studying his script, looked up and got a little wistful when he saw the poster. "I was this close to getting that role" he said. Then, went back to the script with a laconic "Aw, but Billy did a great job!" Nice.

 

One wonders what Stevens would have made of the documentary. One imagines that, with his discriminating perfectionist hand in it, it wouldn't have been released yet. As it is, you can find it with a simple search on You Tube.

One thing's for sure. Stevens would have hated—absolutely hated—the poster for the film.*

Stevens (in the flying suit next to "Hitler) filming his cameo for The Rocketeer.

He played a volunteer for a German rocket-pack prototype...which ends up exploding. 

* Of course, for attracting a larger audience, it had to have "The Rocketeer" and Dave's Bettie on it. But I would have preferred, and up until a few minutes ago I was using for the poster image, something like the image below (which has neither). But it's "pure Dave".

The Beatles: Get Back

It was 56 years ago today...

There's a new Beatles documentary out—Beatles '64—produced by Martin Scorsese—that re-edits the footage recorded by the Maysles Brothers during the first leg of the first U.S. concert tour of The Beatles. The project may be remarkably similar to what Peter Jackson did in 2021 with all the footage and audio made of the "Let It Be" sessions of 1969. I've managed to get a look at that earlier one (without subscribing to the whims of Disney+), so let's take a look at that earlier re-composition.

The Beatles: Get Back (Peter Jackson, Michael Lindsey-Hogg, 2021) It seemed like such a simple thing. The Beatles would record an album of songs and then do a concert of those songs. Michael Lindsey-Hogg would direct a documentary about making the album and presenting the concert. They'd done it hundreds of times. What could possibly go wrong?

Lots. The Beatles had not toured together in years, which, as insane and chaotic as it was, was a bonding experience. Then, their manager Brian Epstein died, leaving The Beatles to fend for themselves. And, outside of their touring bubble, they were spending more and more time apart. They kept writing. They kept socializing, but their interests began to diversify. They were becoming less The Beatles and more the individuals of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr (in the order of joining the band). They focused on studio-work, the last result being the hodge-podge double "White Album", which saw less collaboration and more individual work. 

The next Beatles Project was just as chaotic—no one could decide on the concert venue, they started working at Twickenham Studios which acoustically sounded like a vault, the close-knit group began to fray and lead guitarist George quit. Then, John boycotted. Then, it was decided to move the recording sessions to their old haunts at Abbey Road. Everything seemed disorganized and in flux. The results became the album "Let It Be" (which was successful) and, released much later, the documentary of the same name. Which was a little horrifying.

What Let It Be (the film) revealed was presentations of the songs, punctuated by the dramatic highlights of the studio sessions...which usually entailed arguments and flashes of bickering, which led to desertions and the general impression that The Beatles were something of a mess as a band, only to have that disproven during the legendary roof-top concert where the raw "live" performances ended up being as good and catchy as a finely-honed studio recording—and ended up being used on the "Let It Be" album.

Lesson learned: The Beatles, as a group, could still produce great music together despite differences, approaches, and personalities. Well, sure, it all sounds alright in the end, but the process of getting there was unnerving to audiences, if not fans. No one likes to see the sausage being made. And the impression Let It Be, the film, left was that, although great music was produced, the bickering, disorganization, defections, gave an air of dysfunction.

But what the film presented was a tiny percentage of what happened in the studio—the opening card for each episode of Get Back lays out the stats: 60 hours of film and 150 hours of audio. Peter Jackson, who had used new digital technology to clean up and colorize archival footage from World War I for his stunning documentary They Shall Not Grow Old was approached to look at the footage and listen to the audio to make a new, more comprehensive documentary about the "Get Back" project and the result is fascinating—if you're a die-hard Beatles fan and understand the process of in-studio writing (and re-writing) and making "take" after "take" before achieving the best possible outcome. Folks are used to listening to "the last take" and hearing the same song over and over again with minute changes can become a bit tedious if you don't understand the concept of "work-in-progress."

And the whole project was "work-in-progress"—working on songs old (that they hadn't previously "cracked") and new to come up with a new album and then trying to decide where they would be performed live, whether with an audience or not, with constant discussions of where to hold such an event...if, in fact, it was going to be done. Add to that the film-crew constantly jockeying around for good angles and catching bits and pieces of performance. Even with those 60 hours of film, Jackson had to perform miracles of editorial fudging to fill out those parts of the 150 hours of audio that had no accompanying sync-picture.

Add to that various issues. Paul is feeling some pressure to "move-along" to get some finished songs "in the can". John has brought Yoko Ono into the studio (for support and because she and John are awaiting word of her impending divorce) and her constant presence starts as a distraction but eventually all the Beatles-wives/girlfriends (and kids) make appearances and the atmosphere gets a little looser and more familial. Individual songs are tried and attempted (some that will appear on the subsequent "Abbey Road" album and solo releases by individual Beatles are passed over). There's a lot of "noodling" of old classics sporadically as the four jam together.

And there are technical issues. They start filming at Twickenham, a film-studio that has some "empty" time before the filming of The Magic Christian there—Ringo's commitment to it is what is driving the one-month time-limit on The Beatles project. It's convenient for the film-makers (it's a film-studio, after all!) but the cavernous space they're practicing in is a disaster acoustically—the band-members don't get any sense of what things "truly" sound like. Then, George receives a vicious shock from a microphone that needs to be fixed—a studio tech only believes it when he reproduces the same shock on himself.

No one's comfortable. Then, Paul's impatience frustrates George over suggestions for lead-guitar parts that ends up with him gently—but pointedly—saying "Yeah, okay, well, I don't mind. I'll play, you know, whatever you want me to play. Or I won't play at all if you don't want me to play, you know. Whatever it is that'll please you, I'll do it." George would subsequently walk out of the sessions (reportedly after some frustration with John but they didn't have film of that), but that scene became the most controversial scene of the Let It Be film. Jackson's Get Back gives it a lot more context: George was having a bad time of it—bad sound, dodgy equipment, rejected songs until "the quiet Beatle" had just had enough. He walked. There would begin a process of negotiation between the four to try and coax him back. The first try did not go well and John subsequently stayed away for part of the day, leaving Paul and Ringo to wonder what the future was, to speculate, and to worry. The footage of the completely-thrown McCartney is a bit heart-breaking.

"And then there were two..." 

Paul McCartney contemplates a future without his band-mates.

John calls Paul, knowing full-well that no music will be had that day, and offers to come in to talk things out. They meet in Twickenham's cafeteria to have it out. Although it isn't filmed, one of the film-crew has hidden a microphone in a pot of flowers on the table and records the whole thing (in what feels like a breach-of-trust!) But, the conversation is revelatory. One is struck by how honest the two are with each other and clear-eyed about the issues. It's clear that they have deep affection for each other but they don't mince words. Both admit that they've been treating George and Ringo as "second-class Beatles" and that they need to do better. And McCartney says something I never would have suspected he'd say to Lennon: "Listen, you're the boss" acknowledging that The Beatles always was Lennon's band. They'll figure it out. They'll do better.

Paul has an idea that the concert should be broadcast like a news-cast

with the last headline being "The Beatles Have Broken Up"

A sleepy Ringo's reaction is priceless.

The solution worked out is to everybody's liking: They'll abandon Twickenham and set up shop at their old recording space at Abbey Road Studios, and George, who'd been talking about great keyboard players they might get for the concert brings in Billy Preston (The Beatles knew him from their early concerts in Germany). The dynamic in the group changes, even an initially-reluctant McCartney finds Preston invaluable in the recording sessions. Things loosen up. Work progresses faster and it looks like they might eke out some good songs playable for the concert.

Things are so relaxed at Abbey Road that the work starts becoming play. Guests visit and scamper about. Yoko Ono and Linda Eastman's daughter Heather start a screaming song duet together. Paul and John start doing songs in various voices and accents to crack each other up. And the control room at Abbey Road becomes packed with Beatles and guests listening to playbacks.

A news headline in the paper about anti-immigration sentiments in England fuels a rough Paul-bassline that impresses George and Paul starts putting protest lyrics to it—"Get Back to where you once belonged"—and John gets energized, throwing out lyric ideas. George brings in a tune he worked out the night before dismissing it as "12-bar blues" and John gets enamored fiddling with a slide guitar somebody's brought in, while Paul experiments with George's idea of a de-tuned piano and the song is a simple addition.

And the concert? Ringo can't travel. Permits in London are a nightmare. They decide to just do it on the roof of Abbey Road, snaking cables to the control room to record it. It's simple. It's easy. And Paul's intrigued with the idea that they might get arrested for it. On a cold day, the group climb the stairs to the roof with Billy Preston, while Yoko and Ringo's wife Maureen huddle off to the side for the spectacle. Six cameras are used to record it, with a few stringers down on the street to record crowd-reactions.

It's at this point that Jackson "goes to town." With six cameras covering the main action, he shows the full concert—including second takes of "Get Back" and "Don't Let Me Down"—from beginning to end, sometimes splitting the screen with different angles—from the moment the group (with Billy Preston) gets up to the roof to the point where they're made to stop at police "request" for noise complaints and traffic disruption. Despite the cold (or perhaps because of it), it's an energetic performance—the last one The Beatles would perform as a group.

From a documentary stand-point, it's the third act "topper" with a good performance, some backstage drama and a few surprises along the way.

But, it's a journey, one that's completed by the skin of the participants' teeth taxing the patience of all involved (and maybe the audience's, too). For Jackson, it was a mammoth undertaking, logging and watching all that footage, listening to all that audio, "cheating" moments that might match what was being said and taking advantage of focusing moments and transitional camera movements when all else fails. That's a monumental task to present approximately 455 minutes of usable material. Herculean. Homeric, even. 

 

And it takes a True Fan. Say what you want about Peter Jackson: like him or not, he puts in the work and goes an extra ten miles to finish the task.

Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger

Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (David Hinton, 2024) The Cohen Media Group is getting more than their fare share of attention from me the last few weeks. In addition to Merchant Ivory and another documentary I'll be writing about in August next year, they've also released a nifty little overview about the film career of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and we're using the singular "career" as the two men formed a creative alliance called "The Archers" and, as such, made some of the more arresting, deep-dish films that came out of England during the 1940's and 1950's. Because they were made in England, some of them are not so widely known as the Hollywood product—in fact, most people got their first looks at them in the early days of television, something of a technological crime, really, as some of these vividly Technicolor films could only be viewed on black-and-white television receivers. That's certainly how Martin Scorsese first encountered them—watching them on TV growing up. And those films were his Rosetta Stone for understanding what movies could do, what they were capable of and how they were art. But, they also influenced Coppola (some of Coppola's more fantastical images are based on their work or at least the "spirit" of them), De Palma, and I would dare say Hitchcock was looking over his shoulder at them, as well.*

I've done individual reviews of early "Archers" movies (including the first five pictured above), but I've missed quite a few of them and this documentary does exactly what it ought to do: whet the appetite to see the unseen. And it reminds you of what made the things great that you have experienced—moments that might have got by you while you were immersed in the story or plot. Now, I really want to see A Canterbury Tale, Gone to Earth and The Tales of Hoffman. Even odd entries like Oh...Rosalinda!, Pursuit of the Graf Spree, and The Queen's Guards. Gee, I even want to see the episode of the American TV series "The Defenders" Powell directed.

Pressburger and Powell couldn't be more different as people—different temperaments, different backgrounds—but they brought out the best in each other and raised the bar for cinematic expressiveness amid emotional repression that veered between the manic and the imperceptible. Plus, they were capable of making movie magic as far as design and effects that veered on the magical. Or the insane. And they were an intertwined team: Pressburger wrote the story and the two would hammer out the script. Together, they'd cast and Powell would direct (with Pressburger on set if changes to the script needed to be made). Powell would go off to Scotland, while Pressburger supervised editing and music. Pressburger dealt with the studios. Powell dealt with cast and crew.

 

And they had a manifesto:

1. We owe allegiance to nobody except the financial interests which provide our money; and, to them, the sole responsibility of ensuring them a profit, not a loss.
2. Every single foot in our films is our own responsibility and nobody else's. We refuse to be guided or coerced by any influence but our own judgement.
3. When we start work on a new idea, we must be a year ahead, not only of our competitors, but also of the times. A real film, from idea to universal release, takes a year. Or more.
4. No artist believes in escapism. And we secretly believe that no audience does. We have proved, at any rate, that they will pay to see the truth, for other reasons than her nakedness.
5. At any time, and particularly at the present, the self-respect of all collaborators, from star to propman, is sustained, or diminished, by the theme and purpose of the film they are working on.

As a primer on all things "Archers" it's a cracker-jack presentation, audited, guided, and presented by Martin Scorsese (who executive-produced). As he's done with a lot of his film documentaries, it's "a personal journey" talking of how he found movies by "The Archers" playing on New York television channels—as mentioned in black-and-white—and his discovery of the films in color, his friendship and correspondence with Powell in his later years, and the influences on his films throughout his own directorial career, even illustrating with comparative clips.

If the film has a flaw, it is that there's a little too much of that. Showing the one clip from Raging Bull—or any one film sequence where the aesthetic applies—would have been enough. We believe you, Marty, "The Archers" were a BIG influence. But, the point doesn't need to be made more than once, and the time spent on other instances would rightly have been better spent on the work of the gentlemen the movie is about, as their films are the ones that need exposure.

 

But, I suppose...with a younger audience, there needed to be some additional hand-holding in explaining that Powell and Pressburger's work is evergreen, that it is still culturally and artistically significant no matter how many young turks get behind a movie camera. And how timeless.

* Over the last few weeks, seeing documentaries and such, you can see the close visual proximity that some of these movies shared at the times of their creation, and one starts to see films echoing off each other rather than single films in the work of one particular artist. These people were visual artists—they watched things, studies the eddies of the art and the business—and you can't help but see comparisons between them.

Merchant Ivory

Merchant/Ivory (Stephen Soucy, 2023) The name of "Merchant Ivory" has long been prejudiciously associated with a certain type of Oscar-bait movie, long on dialogue, high on landscapes, and attracting English actors of such a high caliber that they usually end up on Oscar short-lists for their performances. They have such a high pedigree that you'd never know that the films were lower budgeted than what was evident on-screen, and that the films were made by the skin of the teeth of Merchant Ivory Productions, sometimes risking scuttling the projects before they could be finished, and leaving the actors with a malevolent "Never again..." ("It required an immense amount of stamina" says Emma Thompson "to work for Merchant Ivory") only to be entranced, seduced, cajoled and convinced by either Merchant or Ivory to come back for another go-'round. And despite suspicions that they were being flim-flammed (once again), they did come back. Because to be in a "Merchant Ivory" film was a prestige gig.

The team (which wasn't just producer Ismael Merchant and director James Ivory, but screenwriter/novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and composer Richard Robbins) wasn't afraid to buck current movie trends, go its own way, and chart its own course, self-assured that there was no down-side to going high-brow. And the new documentary Merchant Ivory quite giddily tells the story of the mess in the kitchen that provides the elegant meal. "It'll probably be something you're wildly proud of" says costumer Jenny Beavan of each MP project, "but...."

The beginning of the story involves the meeting of James Ivory (from Klamath Falls, Oregon) and Ismail Merchant (born in Mumbai—although it was Bombay at the time) at the Indian Consulate in New York, where there was a reception for a documentary Ivory had made in India. The two became partners, personally and professionally, their first project together an adaptation of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's "The Householder"—her husband told her not to get involved with them, but she became enchanted with Merchant's Bali-hoo and "I liked the razzmatazz." It was not the smoothest first film of the partnership as the money ran out, but Ivory hated shooting in the Delhi heat, and when it came time to edit the film, they turned to Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray to put it together. Merchant sold it to Columbia Pictures "by some miracle" and used the profits to make their next film Shakespeare Wallah.

They made four films in India and then went international with some weird choices: Savages, The Wild Party, but then settled down with such high-brow fare as 1979's The Europeans, 1983's adaptation of Jhabvala's Heat and Dust, and 1984's The Bostonians, until things exploded (mind you, it was an elegant, mannered explosion) with 1985's A Room With a View, which not only received tremendous critical acclaim and great box office, but also was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. Rather than sign with any studio, Merchant Ivory chose to stay independent and in 1987 took the company public.

Produced by Cohen Media Group (which now owns the entire Merchant Ivory catalog) Merchant Ivory tells the story of the film-making team: Ismael the producer, James the director, but also, essentially and unquestionably, in what one of the participants calls "the Merchant Ivory vortex," Ruth the writer and Richard the composer. The four of them, each with a different personality—Ismael voluble and hyperbolic, James "quietly determined," and "unneurotic," Ruth the arbiter of taste and Richard the musical soul—formed a social and working club-house of essential ingredients, each with their specialty, but in close collaboration that influenced their projects and shaped the direction of the company and the films produced by it.

It's divided into six chapters, but, like the company itself, doesn't seem to adhere to each chapter's subject matter, cascading into other stories that spring to mind, but essentially telling the overview of the story in a chronological order, with particular asides for projects that garnered particular attention. They are:
 

Chapter One The Wandering Company: how two opposites in temperament and origins joined forces as independent film-makers—each had made documentaries by that time—and as a couple and began making relatively inexpensive films in India, the first of which brought Ruth Prawer Jhabvala into the mix (she adapted her own novel for them) as Muse, Arbiter of Taste, and the Book-Cracker, who would boil things down to essentials and if something wasn't up to her standards, she'd fix it.

Merchant's first visa to the U.S.: notice how he scratched out "Profession"

 

Chapter Two: the Mystic Masseuse: the story of Ismael Merchant, a man of Big Dreams and wide contradictions—gay, Muslim, a wheeler-dealer and con-man ("Yeah, sure, he was" says Ivory), extravagant in his ideas and juggling deals in order to achieve them, but never selling out to a studio in order to maintain independence over his company's work. Crew members talk of his being on the set constantly imploring Ivory—"Shooot, Jim! Shooot!"—shaking their head in astonishment "This rascal has done it again!" Hopkins ruefully smiles as he says "He can talk the birds out of the trees."

 

A Room with a View (1985) A water-shed moment for the company when international success comes to them after years of defying expectations and scraping by financing their films. Their dedication to authors like Henry James and E.M.Forster pays off and brings them critical and audience acclaim as well as much attention from the many awards groups. They are still financially rocky, but are no less dedicated to their favorite authors.

Chapter III: The Unspeakable Vice of the Greeks James Ivory, being the last survivor of the Merchant Ivory core, talks about his growing up as something of an outsider—adopted, intellectual, closeted—but collaborators and actors talk about how he's the least problematic director they've ever worked with and he comes across as easy-going, honest, unapologetic, with no regrets and certainly no resentfulness.

Maurice (1987) Ivory wanted to make an adaptation of Forster's posthumous novel of homosexuality and class, which Merchant had qualms about—after the success of A Room with a View, why risk it—but "the vortex" went ahead with it with Jhabvala begging off, calling it "sub-Forster" but coming back to fix a crucial plot-point.

Chapter IV Only Connect The film looks at the life and accomplishments of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, winner of the Booker Prize for her own work, and her essential partnership with Merchant Ivory—she garnered the most Oscars for her work of the group (along with the costume departments) and her ability to write illuminating dialog for any character, no matter how repressed—and her screenplays are notably free of descriptions—made her the foundation of so much of what was great about Merchant Ivory.

Howard's End 1992 It was Jhabvala who raised the challenge to the team that this Forster work was "a mountain you have to climb" and the film garnered multiple Oscar nominations and an Oscar for Emma Thompson and she and Helena Bonham Carter and Samuel West go into vivid detail about the challenges and memories of working on the film, which was immediately followed up by

 

The Remains of the Day 1993 Most of the people being interviewed agree that this was the apex of the Merchant Ivory group and quite a few focus on Anthony Hopkins' performance for special mention, with Thompson calling out a particular scene with how Hopkins set up the tone and flabbergasted her with his performance. At one point Hugh Grant says "If someone said to me show me perfect film acting, I'd show them Tony Hopkins in Remains of the Day and, in fact, The Remains of the Day is one of the best films I've ever seen let alone been in.

 

Chapter V You Mean a Great Deal to this House This segment focuses on the life and career of Richard Robbins, who was something of a musical savant and began composing for the Merchant Ivory films with The Europeans and worked on every score up until The White Countess in 2005. As is stated in the film, his was probably the most notable director/composer collaborations since Herrmann and Hitchcock or Rota and Fellini.

Chapter VI Head and Heart The last segment talks about the Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Merchant Ivory began to work with big-time studios and working with bigger budgets, which made what they could do a bit easier, but the team began to splinter—Merchant began directing his own films (with Ivory ever-present as an advisor)—and then, time took its toll: Merchant died in 2005, Robbins in 2012, and Jhabvala in 2013. 

 

Only Ivory survives to tell the tale, and he's still working—he's the oldest recipient of an Oscar for his screenplay of Call Me By My Name, directed a film in 2022 (at the age of 94) and he's executive produced four films that are coming out in the next year. It's a fascinating story, with ample amounts of clips, and interviews with some of the finest raconteurs in entertainment. And it does exactly what Cohen Media Group wants it to do—it makes you want to seek out these films and the books they're based on.