#Ernest Haller

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What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962).

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Director Robert Z. Leonard, actor Luise Rainer, and cinematographer Ernest Haller eating apple pies on set of ESCAPADE (1935).

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Mildred Pierce (1945) directed by Michael Curtiz featuring Joan Crawford and Ann Blyth

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Confederate Propoganda Film

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Dread by the Decade: Murders in the Zoo

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★★½

Plot: An abusive husband uses the animals he donates to a zoo to commit murder.

Review: While its fun premise is squandered, its realistic portrayal of domestic abuse and Atwill's ominous performance save it from total irrelevance.

Year: 1933 Genre: Psychological Horror Country: United States Language: English Runtime: 1 hour 2 minutes

Director: A. Edward Sutherland Writers: Philip Wylie, Seton I. Miller Cinematographer: Ernest Haller Cast: Lionel Atwill, Gail Patrick, Randolph Scott, Kathleen Burke, Charlie Ruggles

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Story: 3/5 - A bizarre amount of time is dedicated to Ruggles' inessential comedic relief character instead of mystery and kills. Its strongest plot point is the relationship between Eric and Evelyn.

Performances: 3/5 - Atwill is great as the cruel Eric, but Ruggles is often grating and Burke is sometimes stiff.

Cinematography: 3/5 - Serviceable.

Editing: 2.5/5 - Scenes sometimes end too abruptly.

Effects: 4/5

Sets: 3/5 - Realistic and well constructed but, like everything else, there is a distinct absence of creativity.

Costumes, Hair, & Make-Up: 4.5/5 - The prosthetics for the sewn mouth are quite shocking for the time.

Trigger Warnings:

Real animal abuse (elephant hooks, improper habitats, animal fighting, etc.)

Very brief, moderate violence

Animal death (fake)

Domestic abuse

Brief marital assault

Brief racist discussion of Asia

Brief discussion of alcoholism

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Natalie Wood and James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (Nicholas Ray, 1955)

Cast: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, James Backus, Ann Doran, Corey Allen, William Hopper, Rochelle Hudson, Dennis Hopper. Screenplay: Stewart Stern, Irving Shulman, Nicholas Ray. Cinematography: Ernest Haller. Art direction: Malcolm C. Bert. Film editing: William H. Ziegler. Music: Leonard Rosenbaum. 

Rebel Without a Cause seems to me a better movie than either of the other two James Dean made: East of Eden (Elia Kazan, 1955) and Giant (George Stevens, 1956). It's less pretentious than the adaptation of John Steinbeck's attempt to retell the story of Cain and Abel in the Salinas Valley, and less bloated than the blockbuster version of Edna Ferber's novel about Texas. And Ray, a director with many personal hangups of his own, was far more in tune with Dean than either Kazan or Stevens, who were shocked by their star's eccentricities. Granted, Rebel is full of hack psychology and sociology, attributing the problems of Jim Stark (Dean), Judy (Natalie Wood), and John "Plato" Crawford (Sal Mineo) to parental inadequacy: Jim's weak father (Jim Backus) and domineering mother (Ann Doran) and paternal grandmother (Virginia Brissac), Judy's distant father (William Hopper) and mother (Rochelle Hudson), and Plato's absentee parents who have left him in care of the maid (Marietta Canty). In fact, Jim and his friends really are rebels without a cause, there being neither an efficient cause -- one that makes them do stupidly self-destructive things -- nor a final cause -- a clear purpose behind their madness. Fortunately, Ray is not as interested in explaining his characters as he is in bringing them to life. Unlike Kazan or Stevens, Ray gives his actors ample room to explore the parts they're playing. There's a loose, improvisatory quality to the scenes Dean, Wood, and Mineo play together, more suggestive of the French New Wave filmmakers than of Hollywood's tightly controlled directors. It's no surprise that both Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut were admirers of Ray's work. At the same time, though, Rebel is very much a Hollywood product, with vivid color cinematography by Ernest Haller, who had won an Oscar for his work on Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939), and a fine score by Leonard Rosenman. Most of all, though, it has Dean, Wood, and Mineo, performers with an obvious rapport. At one point, for example, Dean puts a cigarette in his mouth backward -- filter on the outside -- and Wood reaches out and turns it around, a bit establishing their intimacy that feels so real that you wonder if it was improvised or developed in performance. (In fact, I noticed the gesture because I had just seen Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend, made ten years earlier, in which Jane Wyman performs the same turning-the-cigarette-around action for Ray Milland several times. Cigarettes are nasty things but they make wonderful props.)

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Cast: James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, James Backus, Ann Doran, Corey Allen, William Hopper, Rochelle Hudson, Dennis Hopper. Screenplay: Stewart Stern, Irving Shulman, Nicholas Ray. Cinematography: Ernest Haller. Art direction: Malcolm C. Bert. Film editing: William H. Ziegler. Music: Leonard Rosenbaum. 

Rebel Without a Cause seems to me a better movie than either of the other two James Dean made: East of Eden (Elia Kazan, 1955) and Giant (George Stevens, 1956). It’s less pretentious than the adaptation of John Steinbeck’s attempt to retell the story of Cain and Abel in the Salinas Valley, and less bloated than the blockbuster version of Edna Ferber’s novel about Texas. And Ray, a director with many personal hangups of his own, was far more in tune with Dean than either Kazan or Stevens, who were shocked by their star’s eccentricities. Granted, Rebel is full of hack psychology and sociology, attributing the problems of Jim Stark (Dean), Judy (Natalie Wood), and John “Plato” Crawford (Sal Mineo) to parental inadequacy: Jim’s weak father (Jim Backus) and domineering mother (Ann Doran) and paternal grandmother (Virginia Brissac), Judy’s distant father (William Hopper) and mother (Rochelle Hudson), and Plato’s absentee parents who have left him in care of the maid (Marietta Canty). In fact, Jim and his friends really are rebels without a cause, there being neither an efficient cause – one that makes them do stupidly self-destructive things – nor a final cause – a clear purpose behind their madness. Fortunately, Ray is not as interested in explaining his characters as he is in bringing them to life. Unlike Kazan or Stevens, Ray gives his actors ample room to explore the parts they’re playing. There’s a loose, improvisatory quality to the scenes Dean, Wood, and Mineo play together, more suggestive of the French New Wave filmmakers than of Hollywood’s tightly controlled directors. It’s no surprise that both Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut were admirers of Ray’s work. At the same time, though, Rebel is very much a Hollywood product, with vivid color cinematography by Ernest Haller, who had won an Oscar for his work on Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939), and a fine score by Leonard Rosenman. Most of all, though, it has Dean, Wood, and Mineo, performers with an obvious rapport. At one point, for example, Dean puts a cigarette in his mouth backward – filter on the outside – and Wood reaches out and turns it around, a bit establishing their intimacy that feels so real that you wonder if it was improvised or developed in performance. (In fact, I noticed the gesture because I had just seen Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend, made ten years earlier, in which Jane Wyman performs the same turning-the-cigarette-around action for Ray Milland several times. Cigarettes are nasty things but they make wonderful props.)

James Dean as Jim Stark REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) dir. Nicholas Ray

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Gone with the Wind | Victor Fleming | Ernest Haller

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Gone with the Wind (1939)

“No, I don't think I will kiss you, although you need kissing, badly. That's what's wrong with you. You should be kissed and often, and by someone who knows how.”

Directors: Victor Fleming, George Cukor, Sam Wood

Cinematographer: Ernest Haller, Lee Garmes

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the verdict (us, siegel 46)

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She's baaaaaack -- from the dead! This 1957 b-movie BACK FROM THE DEAD is directed by Charles Warren and stars Peggie Castle, Marsha Hunt, Arthur Franz and Don Haggerty.

What will your hosts think of this female-led horror? Does it deserve to remain in obscurity?

Context setting 00:00; Synopsis 19:45; Discussion 43:24; Ranking 57:38

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What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962).

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I thought it was pizza but it’s an apple pie director Robert Z. Leonard, Luise Rainer, and cinematographer Ernest Haller are eating in this publicity photo for ESCAPADE (1935).

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Fuck the Confederacy

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Great sequence of Joan Crawford in ‘Humoresque (1946), courtesy of director Jean Negulesco & cinematographer Ernest Haller

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John Garfield and Joan Crawford in Humoresque (Jean Negulesco, 1946) Cast: Joan Crawford, John Garfield, Oscar Levant, J. Carrol Naish, Ruth Nelson, Joan Chandler, Tom D'Andrea, Peggy Knudsen, Craig Stevens, Paul Cavanagh, Richard Gaines, Robert Blake. Screenplay: Clifford Odets, Zachary Gold, based on a story by Fannie Hurst. Cinematography: Ernest Haller. Art direction: Hugh Reticker. Film editing: Rudi Fehr. Music: Franz Waxman. Jean Negulesco's Humoresque gets its title from the Fannie Hurst short story it's based on, but it also evokes the music played behind the opening title: the seventh of Antonín Dvořák's Humoresques, a group of short piano pieces that were later transcribed for orchestra. The music is best known today for the several facetious lyrics that have been attached to it, including "Passengers will please refrain from flushing toilets while the train is standing in the station." Today, the movie also inspires similar irreverence, as an example of the melodramatic excesses of Joan Crawford's later career. How many drag queens have donned replicas of the Adrian gowns Crawford wears in the film, with shoulder pads so wide and sharp you fear that she could injure a bystander with a sudden turn? But there are far worse movies than Humoresque, and far less impressive performances than Crawford's in it. She doesn't appear until well into the film, after we've established the ruthless desire of Paul Boray (John Garfield) to become a famous concert violinist. All he needs, it seems, is a rich patron, so when he meets Helen Wright (Crawford), who has the money and nothing else to do with it but take lovers and drink, his fate is sealed. It's not like he doesn't have people to warn him off: There's his fellow musician, pianist Sid Jeffers (Oscar Levant), who can't supply much more than cynical wisecracks to keep Paul from doing the wrong thing. And there's his mother (Ruth Nelson), who bought him his first violin but now wants him to settle down with fellow starving musician Gina (Joan Chandler) and raise a family. But once Paul falls into Helen's clutches and becomes a hugely successful concert artist, all Mama and Gina can do is sit in the audience and glare up at Helen in her box -- though Gina sometimes bursts into tears and flees the auditorium. None of this would work if Garfield and Crawford didn't play their roles as well as they do. Garfield brings all the intensity and conviction to Paul that he does to his ambitious boxer in Body and Soul (Robert Rossen, 1947). Although the violin playing is actually done by Isaac Stern, with some nice camera trickery that puts Garfield's face and Stern's fingers in the same frame, Garfield keeps up the illusion well, to the extent of busily working the fingers on his left hand, practicing the fingering even when he's not playing. He has some improbable lines to speak -- the screenplay by Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold is freighted with them -- but he makes them work. As for Crawford, ambition was her nature and ruthlessness her forte in life as well as art, but she never just speaks her lines -- she inhabits them. There's no surprise in her performance, but that's not what we want from her. Negulesco's direction can be a little shapeless -- there's a gratuitous mid-film montage depicting a busy, hyped-up New York City -- but he handles the concluding sequence, set to a pastiche of themes from Tristan und Isolde, very well. Franz Waxman received an Oscar nomination for scoring, and there are excerpts from composers like Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Bizet, Mendelssohn, and Bach throughout: The film is a reminder that there was once a time when the audience for a Hollywood film would sit through extended passages of classical music.