#albert bassermann

[letterboxd-loggd]

Foreign Correspondent (1940) Alfred Hitchcock

July 30th 2023

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[postcard-from-the-past]

Hans Albers, Albert Bassermann and Olga Tschechowa

German vintage postcard

[ulrichgebert]

Seine Affairen mit all den schönen Frauen, die ihm scharenweise verfallen, nutzt der Halunke und Tunichtgut Bel Ami nur, um sich auf der Karriereleiter hinaufzubewegen. Natürlich entgeht er seiner gerechten Strafe nicht, interessanterweise allerdings nur in der Hollywoodvariante, nicht in Maupassants berühmten Roman, habe ich jetzt herausgefunden. Läuft im Rahmen der stark vernachlässigten immerwährenden George-Sanders-Wochen und Angela-Lansbury-Wertschätzung-Maßnahmen.

[ruleof3bobby]

FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT (1940) Grade: B-

Not the typical Hitchcock film you would think of. Still, it's a master class in spy movies. It def set a road map for future spy scripts.

[byneddiedingo]

Robert Helpmann and Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948) Cast: Anton Walbrook, Moira Shearer, Marius Goring, Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine, Ludmilla Tchérina, Esmond Knight, Albert Bassermann, Austin Trevor, Irene Browne. Screenplay: Emeric Pressburger, Keith Winter, Michael Powell, based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen. Cinematography: Jack Cardiff. Production design: Hein Heckroth. Film editing: Reginald Mills. Music: Brian Easdale. Costume design: Hein Heckroth. In its digital restoration, The Red Shoes almost certainly looks better than it ever did even in the most optimal theatrical showing, its colors brighter and sharper, its darks deeper and more detailed. But is that necessarily a good thing? I'm not like one of those audiophiles who insist that old vinyl LPs sound better than CDs or any digital audio process -- I like being able to hear things without surface pops and skips. But I do think that in the case of a film like The Red Shoes, where suspension of disbelief is essential, something has been lost. The great red snood of Moira Shearer's hair is revealed to be a thing of individual strands that might have benefited from a quick brushing before her closeups. The special-effects moments, like Vicky's (Shearer) leap into the red shoes or Boleslawsky's (Robert Helpmann) transformation into the newspaper man, are more glaringly just rudimentary jump cuts. There's a loss of glamour and magic that hasn't been compensated for, even though we can now see Jack Cardiff's photography of Hein Heckroth's designs with greater clarity. I will also admit that I have never been in the front ranks of the fans of The Red Shoes. While I admire the storytelling ability of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, I have to question the moral of the story, which seems to be that a woman can't have both a great career and a successful private life, or in a larger sense, that art is impossible without a loss of self. Granted, the story comes from the realm of fairytale, which is never without an element of cruelty, but is Vicky's suicide a necessary follow-through, or just a submission on the part of the screenwriters to the demands of some kind of closure, given that they've never made the character more than a stereotype: the woman torn between the demands of two men? Ravishing to the eye, The Red Shoes doesn't satisfy the mind or the heart.

[weimarhaus]

Anita Berber as noblewoman Julia Orsini with Tibor Lubinsky in a still image from the surviving 1922 Richard Oswald film adaptation of Lucrezia Borgia. This film stars Austrian star Liane Haid in the title role with Conrad Veidt as Cesare Borgia and Albert Bassermann as Pope Alexander VI.

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

The Shanghai Gesture

Josef von Sternberg’s THE SHANGHAI GESTURE (1941) takes place in such an artificial world a shot of a plane flying across a real sky seems out of place. Yet the director’s style is so consistent and strong that even the film’s flaws, chief among them a truly atrocious drunk scene played by Gene Tierney, can’t detract from its overall power. To appease the censors, von Sternberg had to transform Mother Goddam’s brothel from John Colton’s play into Mother Gin Sling’s casino and have her enemy’s daughter succumb not to opium addiction but to addictions to gambling, alcohol and a hunky Syrian (he was a Japanese prince in the original, but many states banned films with interracial romances). Almost everything is shot on sound stages, with the casino, a wonder of art direction, arranged in descending circles like Dante’s vision of hell. At the center is Ona Munson, a skinny, freckled blonde transformed into the Orientalized image of corruption, Mother Gin Sling, pitched somewhere between Norma Desmond and Lucretia Borgia. It’s a marvelous performance, with Munson dominating every shot she’s in and even piercing the heavy “yellowing up” makeup to create a rich picture of a woman who’s allowed a life of pain to turn her into a dragon. Tierney is the object of her revenge, and though her line readings are tinny and unconvincing, she looks marvelous in gowns designed by Oleg Cassini, and her physical deterioration is a great visual trope. Walter Huston is reliably good as the tycoon who once wronged Munson and now is trying to close her casino (it’s a post-colonial comment as the Western politicos and businessmen decide to turn the city’s Chinese-run casino district into homes for wealthy Europeans). The real surprise, however, is Victor Mature as Doctor Omar, who seduces Tierney so he can get rich off her gifts and a little blackmail. He thrives under von Strenberg’s controlling direction to create a powerful and very sexy image of decadence. The cast also includes Phyllis Brooks as a wise-cracking chorus girl, Albert Bassermann as the colonial leader, Eric Blore as Mother Gin Sling’s bookkeeper, Maria Ouspenskaya as her silent servant (her lines were cut when preview audiences roared at seeing a Chinese woman with a thick Russian accent), Grayce Hampton as a society doyenne and Marcel Dalio as the croupier. Mike Mazurki made his film debut as a rickshaw driver who seems to be flirting successfully with Houston.

[genevieveetguy]

I'm in love with a girl, and I'm going to help hang her father.

Foreign Correspondent, Alfred Hitchcock (1940)

[clemsfilmdiary]

Foreign Correspondent (1940, Alfred Hitchcock)

4/30/22

[letterboxd-loggd]

The Red Shoes (1948) Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

December 11th 2022

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[scenesandscreens]

The Red Shoes (1948)

Directed by Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, Cinematography by Jack Cardiff

"One day when I'm old, I want some lovely young girl to say to me, "Tell me, where in your long life, Mr. Craster, were you most happy?" And I shall say, 'Well, my dear, I never knew the exact place. It was somewhere on the Mediterranean. I was with Victoria Page." "What?" she will say. "Do you mean the famous dancer?" I will nod. "Yes, my dear, I do. Then she was quite young, comparatively unspoiled. We were, I remember, very much in love."

[ulrichgebert]

Wir feiern 100 Jahre Rhapsody in Blue (sie wurde am 12. Februar 1924 uraufgeführt) mit der dramaturgisch und faktenchecktechnisch etwas wackligen Gershwin-Filmbiographie Rhapsody in Blue, die aber jede Menge fabelhafte Musiknummern enthält, darunter -Sie ahnen es! Und nicht zu knapp!- die Rhapsody in Blue.

[mariocki]

Invisible Agent (1942)

"Since you're unwilling to let the Axis powers use your formula, will you consider submitting it to the American government? Naturally, we've known about you for some time, but respected your incognito. However, since that's been exposed, we'd deem it a highly patriotic service if you would permit us to use the drug."

"There's no use asking me. I should have destroyed it years ago."

"But if your country had great need for it? A critical emergency?"

"There will never be an emergency critical enough to justify its use - never."